You may or may not have heard the phrase, “emotional intelligence and resilience.” If you are not familiar with the phrase, it is important for you to learn what it means. Developing both emotional intelligence and a sense of resiliency in your child can make a world of difference.
By developing both a sense of emotional intelligence and resiliency, your child can better identify and evaluate appropriate emotions. They also control and express themselves more appropriately for improved communication and negotiation. Helping your child build up their sense of emotional intelligence as well as their sense of resilience is not as hard as it might sound.
Building Intelligence and Resilience
Parents often ask how they can build their child’s emotional intelligence and resilience. The answer lies in the way that you allow your child to express emotions and what emotions you encourage. The following are just some of the ways you can help build intelligence and resiliency:
- Expressing Emotions: Do not try to stop your child from feeling emotions. For instance, if your child cries, do not try to stop them, particularly if they are crying to express pain, sadness, or upset. Crying is a normal way to express these emotions and trying to shut down any emotion your child feels instead of normalizing their emotions can prevent them from processing emotions properly.
- Allow Experiences: It is a natural reaction for parents to want to step in when their child goes through certain experiences. For instance, your child fails at doing a simple task, so you want to step in and help by doing it for them. However, it is not harmful for your child to experience failure from time-to-time. In fact, it helps your child build emotional intelligence and resilience.
- Validate Emotions: Acknowledge your child’s emotions and the reason behind them. The goal here is not to be judgmental. Instead, maintain a matter-of-fact tone of voice while remaining warm and loving. Validating your child’s emotions means that you understand what and why they feel the way they do so they can accept the moment and move on.
Building a sense of intelligence and resiliency does not have to be as impossible as it might seem. Yes, it can be frustrating when your child goes through a range of emotions. However, following the tips above will allow you to teach your child how to cycle through emotions naturally.
If you prevent your child from experiencing different emotions, the way that they express themselves will only get worse. Your child will not understand how to normalize their feelings and process their emotions properly, which can have negative consequences later down the road.
By teaching your children how to deal with their emotions, they also learn to identify the emotions of others. Their thoughts are more profound, as are their actions. Children who learn emotional intelligence and resilience tend to communicate better and trust more openly than those who do not. These children also learn to have empathy for their peers.
If you are struggling to teach your child emotional intelligence and resilience, contact a therapist for help. A therapist can assist you in understanding your child’s emotions so you can, in turn, help your child. Both you and your child will benefit from the experience in a positive way. A child that can recognize feelings and understand where they come from and why is able to achieve greater success in life as they grow older.
Monica Ramunda is a solution-focused therapist with an office located in Louisville, Colorado for in-office visits. With a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology and more than 18 years experience in therapy and counseling, Monica works as both a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and Registered Play Therapist (RPT) with adults and children respectively. Much of Monica’s success is based on her eclectic orientation and drawing on a wide range of different approaches and techniques all while remaining strongly grounded in the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Techniques (CBT).